The third in the series of the revolutionary annual media week programme of The Pointer chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) begins on Sunday, October 27, 2013. It will run till November 1, 2013, with a dinner in Asaba.
An official statement issued to this effect by the NUJ Chapel Chairman, Comrade Fidelis Egugbo; the Chairman of the Organising Committee, Comrade (Mrs) Lucky Ubiebor and the Committee’s Secretary, Cletus Ngwodo, said the high-point of the programme is the annual lecture which will hold on October 29, 2013 at Chad-Ef Hotels, by Inter Bau Roundabout, Asaba. It is to be delivered by a member of the House of Representatives, Hon. (Mrs) Evelyn Oboro, a spring time politician and active member on the floor of the lower chamber of Nigeria’s bicameral legislature.
The Lecture: New Revenue Allocation Formula (RAF) and the Nigerian Project: The Role Of The Mass Media, is part of efforts of the Chapel NUJ to reach out to the various publics of The Pointer newspaper group and contribute, by way of informed debate and discourse, to efforts to re-kit the Nigerian project by streaming it along the line of equity and efficiency.
This year’s lecture, the first to be delivered by a grass root politician with nation-wide penetration and appeal, is equally historic in the sense of being the first to be given by a female, the first two having been delivered by men, including world-renowned architect and applied arts expert, Prof Demas Nwoko (who gave the 2012 edition), and a Lagos-based Chartered Accountant and academic, Chief Kenneth Olise (he delivered the 2011
edition of the lecture). Second Republic political icon, former member of the House of Representatives and erstwhile member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, High Chief Tom Egbuwoku is to chair the occasion at which dignitaries from sundry fields are expected.
Hon. Oboro’s lecture comes at a time the Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission is on a nation-wide consultations with stakeholders on the primacy and imperative for a new RAF, following snowballing complaints of the inequity in the subsisting RAF which allocates 52.7 percent to the central government,leaving all 36 state and 774 local governments with 26,7 per cent and 20.6 per cent, respectively. The nation-wide complaints against the RAF is pegged on its link to population-rather than effective contribution to the national till- and its alleged scant slant on the ecological cost of the exploration and exploitation of crude oil, the live wire of the national economy.
Aside of the lecture, The Pointer NUJ 2013 media Week Programme has other core elements as a Christian thanksgiving service at St. Philip’s Anglican Church, AGGS, Asaba holding on Sunday, October 27; an excursion tour; humanitarian visits to hospitals/orphanages; a novelty football between the chapel NUJ and its NTA Asaba chapel holding on October 30 at the Football Pitch, Squash Club, Government House, Asaba as well as a dinner which begins by 6.30 pm on November 1, 2013.
